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The exact origin and first history of the race whose energy so stunted
the growth of early Canada and made the cause of France in America
impossible, have long been wrapped in mystery. In the days of the first
white settlements the Iroquois are found leagued as the Five Nations in
their familiar territory from the Mohawk River westward. Whence they
came thither has always been a disputed question. The early Jesuits
agreed that they were an off shoot of the Huron race whose strongholds
were thickly sown on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, but the Jesuits
were not clear as to their course of migration from that region, it
being merely remarked that they had once possessed some settlements on
the St. Lawrence below Montreal, with the apparent inference that they
had arrived at these by way of Lake Champlain. Later writers have drawn
the same inference from the mention made to Cartier by the Hochelagans
of certain enemies from the south whose name and direction had a
likeness to later Iroquois conditions. Charlevoix was persuaded by
persons who he considered had sufficiently studied the subject that
their seats before they left for the country of the Five Nations were
about Montreal. The late Horatio Hale[1] put the more recently current
and widely accepted form of this view as follows: "The clear and
positive traditions of all the surviving tribes, Hurons, Iroquois and
Tuscaroras, point to the Lower St. Lawrence as the earliest known abode
of their stock. Here the first explorer, Cartier, found Indians of this
stock at Hochelaga and Stadacona, now the sites of Montreal and Quebec.
Centuries before his time, according to the native tradition, the
ancestors of the Huron Iroquois family had dwelt in this locality, or
still further east and nearer to the river's mouth. As the numbers
increased, dissensions arose. The hive swarmed and band after band moved
off to the west and south."

"Their first station on the south side of the lakes was at the mouth of
the Oswego River.[2] Advancing to the southeast, the emigrants struck
the River Hudson" and thence the ocean. "Most of them returned to the
Mohawk River, where the Huron speech was altered to Mohawk. In Iroquois
tradition and in the constitution of their League the Canienga (Mohawk)
nation ranks as 'eldest brother' of the family. A comparison of the
dialects proves this tradition to be well founded. The Canienga language
approaches nearest to the Huron, and is undoubtedly the source from
which all the other Iroquois dialects are derived. Cusick states
positively that the other families, as he styles them, of the Iroquois
household, leaving the Mohawks in their original abode, proceeded
step by step to the westward. The Oneidas halted at their creek, the
Onondagas at their mountain, the Cayugas at their lake and the Senecas
or Sonontowans, the great hill people, at a lofty eminence which rises
south of the Canandaigua Lake." Hale appeals also to the Wyandot
tradition recorded by Peter Dooyentate Clark, that the Huron originally
lived about Montreal near the "Senecas," until war broke out and drove
them westward. He sets the formation of the League of the Long House as
far back as the fourteenth century.

All these authors, it will be seen, together with every historian who
has referred to the League, treat of the Five Nations as always
having been one people ... Continue reading book >>